Remembering Grandma



My grandmother with my middle child in 2007





When I think about Grandma the thing that strikes me most is her stubborn perseverance through difficulty. When I was in high school, Grandma hurt her back cleaning the back of her piano -- It's OK. Go ahead and say it: 'Who does that?'

Well let me tell you: I don't. I can barely keep the fronts of my furniture clean. But Grandma was a bit of an over-achiever when it came to cleaning.

So she hurt her back and was paralyzed from the waist down. Before this, she was an active lady (do I need to remind you that she moved her piano, by herself, to clean the back of it?) But there she was. Paralyzed. And then my Grandpa's heart began to fail. He was in the hospital and she couldn't be there with him. Eventually they were able to stabilize Grandpa and he came home.

I like to think of this time as God's gift to all of us. Because in this period of time Grandma was living in the rehab hospital working for hours every day to get back on her feet and Grandpa spent most of his days at our house. God was so good to us in that time. In spite of all of the turmoil -- or maybe because of it -- our family was gifted with an opportunity to learn to love each other well. And Grandma? Well, Grandma never gave up. She worked hard and with such determination and by the grace of God she walked out of that rehab hospital a few days before her birthday.

But unfortunately, the difficulty wasn't over. Because on her birthday, Grandpa suffered a heart attack. He died just a few days later. At the time I had no concept of how much Grandma's world had been rocked and in my self-centered teenaged-ness I just didn't get it. But here was a woman whose body had betrayed her and still had more recovering to do, but she had just had this victory of walking when no one knew for sure if she could and coming home to her husband whom she had worried about for months from her hospital room.

And suddenly he was gone.


The next several years were difficult for Grandma. And at times her despair was knock-you-in- the-face overwhelming. But she never gave up. Never. She kept persisting. She kept going. Many people would have given in to the temptation to just give up when faced with what Grandma faced. And though as a teenager I didn't get it, as a grownup I now see that underneath her grandmotherly exterior was a will stronger than steel.




OK, maybe not this rockin' awesome!

One more thing about my Grandma. She had the best shoes. I mean rockin' awesome shoes. To die for shoes. Shoes to match every outfit (of which she had many.) Well, after she hurt her back and then relearned to walk again, all those incredible shoes had to go and boring sensible shoes had to take their place. So she took all of those beautiful shoes, put them in a few white garbage bags and said, "Jennifer, whatever you want and can wear are yours."

Cha-ching!

Except for one small problem: Grandma was a size 7 1/2 narrow. I was an 8 not-so-narrow. I went through all of those shoes, tried them on, and they hurt. But man, did they look good. So I took the ones that hurt the least and a few that just were too stinkin awesome to resist. And I wore those shoes every chance I got even though they pinched my toes so bad I thought they might just fall off.

You know, they tell you not to judge another person until you've walked a mile in their shoes. Well, having walked the whole way through high school graduation in a pair of Grandma's shoes I can testify to the fact that walking any distance in someone else's shoes is a difficult to downright painful experience. But it's because her shoes weren't fit for my feet. They were fit for her feet. We can't ever really walk a mile in someone else's shoes and truly know what it's like for them because their shoes were made to fit them. We all have our own shoes and God gives us our own paths to walk and though it might not always be easy or comfortable, they are decidedly ours and no one else can walk them for us.

Grandma walked a difficult path and I never completely got it. I understand more now, but her shoes weren't fit for my feet and so I'll never know fully. But what I do know is that because of the path she walked she determined that whatever she could still do she would use to help others who couldn't. That's why she drove many people to doctor's appointments. Because she still could and they couldn't. And I believe that is why she also so determinedly kept in contact with old friends -- because she knew the value of relationships and how easily they can change and be gone.

 

You know, God came to earth and walked a mile in our shoes. More than a mile. Many, many miles. But the path that Jesus walked was brutally hard and our shoes were not up to the terrain. Jesus died because he was rejected while walking in our shoes. He didn't have to. It was the path that God chose for Him to travel and He did it to show His love and obedience to His Father. And he did it so that all who believe in Him have their feet set on a path that leads directly to the presence of God the Father. He did it so that Grandma can stand straight and tall, unhindered by aches and pains, and raise hands no longer gnarled by arthritis, to glory in His perfect holiness.

And by the way, if there are shoes in heaven, you can bet hers are going to be rockin' awesome.